Official 4BR Tier List v1.0 - Competitive Impressions

[~ Gheb ~]

MK should have a lot of results in this ranking season if it includes GOML.

 

[sups48]

M2K has a history of saying things like that when he loses. Also, I think people say MM is a bad matchup a lot when they don't know it / are learning it because he's a weird character and is annoying af to play against. The way you describe the MU makes it seem pretty bad for Cloud, but you preface it by saying it's 45:55 or basically even. Which is it? If it is even, what particular advantages does Cloud have which bring it swinging back?

Not really seeing how a Cloud worth his salt will space so badly at high % that he will get hit by powershield Utilt, so I'd say that's irrelevant.

The best clouds vs the best mega man in the US and Japan both lost so I don't think its match up expereice epsically in Komorikiri case. He is weird and annoying and that's why people get overly aggressive and get Up-tilited and die at 70 which is why I said that before, also 70 isn't really high percent. It could be 60:40 but we haven't seen the match-up enough to say that (if Kamemushi beats M2K and Scatt beats Komorikiri then that would prove it) Also cloud has Limit Cross Slash, Beam Blade, and Finishing Touch to come back at any time.

 

[Dre89]

Mixed bag. On the hand, we don't have easy ladder kills and our neutral's still bad. On the other hand, I think she potentially has one of the most powerful mix-up games of the entire cast. Need to see more results before making any tier judgments, but she's much more fun to play IMO.

I'm going to educate everyone about Bayo's neutral.

Core is just short-hopping everywhere, and threatening the 50/50 between AC nair/bair or FF dtilt/dashgrab. You cover everything between these options.

If you get put in a CQC situation use your unpunishable frame 4 upb to reset back to short hopping spam. It doesn't need to hit them, just use your several landing mix ups to reset.

Surplus mix-ups:

Dash-shield to fish for upb OOS combos
ABK or rising nair/bair/fair to catch jumps
Heelslide if you read a roll or punish a landing
Bullet climax/arts to force approaches if need be.

That's the entirety of her neutral. Character's neutral is not complex nor is it bad. You have to mix up between very few options to cover everything and be threatening.


*Drops mic*

 

[Pazx]

Ahem...

Red Topics are explicitly banned. Any post that focuses on them is grounds for a spam infraction.

• Matchup Ratio Meta Discussion
  • "What do/should matchup ratios mean, exactly?"
  • "What is the best way to express matchup ratios?"
  • "How precise can we really claim matchup ratios are?"
  • "What constitutes a 'counter'?"

The red name means I can backseat-moderate from the front seat now!

I would be very interested in hearing what specific tools (aside from "edgeguarding") characters X and Y have that lead to them having advantageous matchups against Cloud, so far it's all been a little vague.

 

[PK Gaming]

Tangentially related, but I went to my first Smash 4 tournament last night. And oh man ya'll, it's totally different on the other side:

• The pressure. Like, I was making mistakes I wouldn't dream of making at home. I'm totally going to go less hard on players who make mistakes at high level play because, goddamn.
  
• The scene was fantastic. It was filled with people who loved Smash Bros. Not too different from this thread even; lots of people talking about metagame trends, cracking jokes, getting salty at characters (but being respectful). Everyone was super nice though.
  
• I was expecting a sausage fest, but it was pretty diverse. There even were a couple of kids there. This one kid and some guy were making fun of ZeRo's tier list. LOL.
• Character specialists everywhere. We had strong players, players, players... There are even trading cards of said players. Gonna try and shoot for best >: )
  
• Speaking of strong players, Holy was there. As well as Jpeds and Jerm. The people who were matched up against them loudly groaned, haha. They were ridiculously strong though, Jpeds took a set in less than 2 minutes ( ´_ゝ`)
  
• I did okay (went 1-2 but did pretty well in friendlies). Gotta work on my bad habits and get better at neutral.
  
• EVERYONE has a pocket
• Tournaments are exhausting. The struggle to keep your mental stamina up is real since your matches might take a while to start.
  
• We have the best goddamn TO.
• If you're hesitant about going to your local scene, don't be. Just GO.

 

[Dee-SmashinBoss]

That sounds awesome, but what do you mean by, "the other side"?
Do you mean FG or something or.......?

Anyways congrats on your first tournament, I hope to understand the feeling as well some day.

 

[Zelder]

Lmao that's weird, I hit up my first tournament in a long ass time last night as well. I caused a bit of a kerfluffle because I 2-0'd a PR'd player (Gael) in round 1. I did okay, 2-2.

Anyways, the point of this is, having dipped my toes back into the tourney scene, I totally get why Dabuz thinks that Rosa isn't solo viable. Everyone, and I mean everyone, plays a Cloud, and Cloud eats Rosa for free. I barely took a match off this solid Rosa with my Mario, and then I slaughterhoused him with my Cloud. I've heard and seen that the MK matchup is just as bad, if not worse, but MK isn't nearly as easy to pick up as Cloud is.

And I can corroborate PK's story: go to your local scene, people are very accommodating and chill. It will probably smell slightly like unwashed funk, but that's the case with any large gathering of nerds, haha.

 

[Thinkaman]

Thanks Pazx , I was about to break out the riot gear and napalm.


Matchup ratio semantic discussion is aimless because no one ever stops to specify the context. 2 stock? 3 stock? Bo3? Bo5?

A 55:45 matchup ratio for a single stock translates to roughly 67:33 for a 3-stock Bo5 set.
A 60:40 matchup ratio for a single stock translates to roughly 82:18 along the same lines.

Arguing numbers is pointless when no one has a consistent idea as to what scale anyone is using. (And please, this isn't an invitation to explain to the class what context we should be using or what your assumptions have been.)


Then on top of that, you get the classic tiering problem of everyone also being on different pages in terms of what level of play we are looking at. Everyone says "top-level play", but ask them what that actually means and the yelling starts.

Then someone insists they are talking about literally the top, Zero-level play, and everything breaks down. You are taking the average results between matchups of all the Zero-level Greninja and R.O.B. players to tell us the matchup ratio between those two characters? Who are these people and why don't they go to any tourneys I attend or watch? "Well no, I was speculating."

Fine. But then why are we talking in a language of data???

 

[Hero_2_All]

Tangentially related, but I went to my first Smash 4 tournament last night. And oh man ya'll, it's totally different on the other side:

• The pressure. Like, I was making mistakes I wouldn't dream of making at home. I'm totally going to go less hard on players who make mistakes at high level play because, goddamn.
  
• The scene was fantastic. It was filled with people who loved Smash Bros. Not too different from this thread even; lots of people talking about metagame trends, cracking jokes, getting salty at characters (but being respectful). Everyone was super nice though.
  
• I was expecting a sausage fest, but it was pretty diverse. There even were a couple of kids there. This one kid and some guy were making fun of ZeRo's tier list. LOL.
• Character specialists everywhere. We had strong players, players, players... There are even trading cards of said players. Gonna try and shoot for best >: )
  
• Speaking of strong players, Holy was there. As well as Jpeds and Jerm. The people who were matched up against them loudly groaned, haha. They were ridiculously strong though, Jpeds took a set in less than 2 minutes ( ´_ゝ`)
  
• I did okay (went 1-2 but did pretty well in friendlies). Gotta work on my bad habits and get better at neutral.
  
• EVERYONE has a pocket
• Tournaments are exhausting. The struggle to keep your mental stamina up is real since your matches might take a while to start.
  
• We have the best goddamn TO.
• If you're hesitant about going to your local scene, don't be. Just GO.

Oh gawd I remember my first man... Things are brutal in San Diego... well socal in general. Gotta play Falln and Ito.... and the lesser bosses who give them their weekly challenges ( IC and Jingen pls). Besides getting bodied and only getting 2-2 for months on end, smash has been really fun, and i'm glad to come over to you guys from SF4. Side note did my first commentary, first that was bad, but then I got a little rhythm. Was personally surprised at how accommodating the smash community is, and that I would also like to say TY too... also best Corrin... pfff I got dis >:D.

 

[MachoCheeze]

When you check your notifications and it's a Thinkaman post

 

[TDK]

When does this ever happen?

Young Link in Melee had no Positive matchups against characters higher than him (except Yoshi), but he was used as a CP character for some of the matchups he had a -1 in, such as Peach and Jigglypuff.

 

[PK Gaming]

That sounds awesome, but what do you mean by, "the other side"?
Do you mean FG or something or.......?

Anyways congrats on your first tournament, I hope to understand the feeling as well some day.

Like, going from spectator to player

Sadly (?) I wasn't on stream

 

[wedl!!]

Can someone explain to me how Bayonetta has a bad neutral? Her neutral is better than like 2/3rds of the cast lmao

Her shorthop game/Bullet Climax/Twist/Dtilt are things quite a few characters would die for

 

[Rhinomaster22]

Character scores, from first post-1.1.6 tourney to June 5th. Weighted Top 16.

Spoiler

Sheik: 121
Diddy Kong: 94
Cloud: 82
Fox: 80
Mario: 58.5
Sonic: 58
Zero Suit Samus: 49.5
Rosalina & Luma: 49.5
Meta Knight: 43.5
Captain Falcon: 37.5
Ryu: 32
Marth: 31
Pikachu: 31
Bayonetta: 27.5
Peach: 27
Donkey Kong: 23
Toon Link: 22.5
Little Mac: 19
Ness: 18.5
Greninja: 18.5
Lucas: 18
R.O.B: 17.5
Luigi: 17
Duck Hunt: 17
Robin: 17
Yoshi: 16
Ike: 14
Mega Man: 12
Pit: 12
Lucario: 11
Bowser: 11
Mewtwo: 11
Villager: 10
Wario: 8
Olimar: 8
Palutena: 8
Bowser Jr.: 7
King Dedede: 7
Corrin: 6.5
Shulk: 5
Link: 5
Mr. Game & Watch: 4
Falco: 2.5
Kirby: 2
Zelda: 2
Mii Brawler: 2
Pac-Man: 1

Just want to be clear about, does this include US results only or international as well?

 

[SaltyKracka]

Can someone explain to me how Bayonetta has a bad neutral? Her neutral is better than like 2/3rds of the cast lmao

Her shorthop game/Bullet Climax/Twist/Dtilt are things quite a few characters would die for

It's like how people say Megaman and Diddy have bad recoveries.

They don't, but when you're used to playing characters who literally can't be gimped (coughShiekcoughZSScough) actually having the potential for flaws seems glaring.

 

[Retlaf]

Tangentially related, but I went to my first Smash 4 tournament last night. And oh man ya'll, it's totally different on the other side:

• The pressure. Like, I was making mistakes I wouldn't dream of making at home. I'm totally going to go less hard on players who make mistakes at high level play because, goddamn.
  
• The scene was fantastic. It was filled with people who loved Smash Bros. Not too different from this thread even; lots of people talking about metagame trends, cracking jokes, getting salty at characters (but being respectful). Everyone was super nice though.
  
• I was expecting a sausage fest, but it was pretty diverse. There even were a couple of kids there. This one kid and some guy were making fun of ZeRo's tier list. LOL.
• Character specialists everywhere. We had strong players, players, players... There are even trading cards of said players. Gonna try and shoot for best >: )
  
• Speaking of strong players, Holy was there. As well as Jpeds and Jerm. The people who were matched up against them loudly groaned, haha. They were ridiculously strong though, Jpeds took a set in less than 2 minutes ( ´_ゝ`)
  
• I did okay (went 1-2 but did pretty well in friendlies). Gotta work on my bad habits and get better at neutral.
  
• EVERYONE has a pocket
• Tournaments are exhausting. The struggle to keep your mental stamina up is real since your matches might take a while to start.
  
• We have the best goddamn TO.
• If you're hesitant about going to your local scene, don't be. Just GO.

Hey, this is my scene! (I haven't been in over a month because of hand problems) And yes, we DO have the best TO! :D Also, we are very lucky because strong out-of-region players invade our weeklies very often.

 

[Jams.]

On Rosalina versus Cloud, I've dug up some posts from Dabuz and Falln saying it's a nuanced MU and likely not a complete wash. They're free to correct me if their opinions have changed since they've made these posts.

From personal experience, this MU doesn't feel like a complete slaughter anymore. Rosa can outspace Cloud's dair if she uairs early and hits Cloud with the lingering hit box. Near the ground, she can outspace dair by usmashing his feet. Juggles are essential to Rosalina, and juggling Cloud, while tricky, is still possible.

She also has strong tools for edgeguarding Cloud. Bair (and to a lesser extent fair and nair) are extremely good for executing the edgeguard scenario Mew2King describes at length here (start with point 31). If she lands bair, Cloud usually dies or is forced into a low recovery, which Rosa can cover for free with dair. Luma also extends the hitlag on Climhazzard, and is a unique tool that either gives Rosa more time to dtilt a low Climhazzard recovery that doesn't sweetspot, or to powershield ->dsmash a high Climhazzard. Basically, she has many ways to force a low recovery from Cloud, at which point Rosa should be able to cover all his options with dair if she's in the right position.

Just want to be clear about, does this include US results only or international as well?

It includes international events as well. The only considerations for this list are the number of entrants an event gets and the presence of known high and top level players.

Tangentially related, but I went to my first Smash 4 tournament last night. And oh man ya'll, it's totally different on the other side:

• The pressure. Like, I was making mistakes I wouldn't dream of making at home. I'm totally going to go less hard on players who make mistakes at high level play because, goddamn.
  
• The scene was fantastic. It was filled with people who loved Smash Bros. Not too different from this thread even; lots of people talking about metagame trends, cracking jokes, getting salty at characters (but being respectful). Everyone was super nice though.
  
• I was expecting a sausage fest, but it was pretty diverse. There even were a couple of kids there. This one kid and some guy were making fun of ZeRo's tier list. LOL.
• Character specialists everywhere. We had strong players, players, players... There are even trading cards of said players. Gonna try and shoot for best >: )
  
• Speaking of strong players, Holy was there. As well as Jpeds and Jerm. The people who were matched up against them loudly groaned, haha. They were ridiculously strong though, Jpeds took a set in less than 2 minutes ( ´_ゝ`)
  
• I did okay (went 1-2 but did pretty well in friendlies). Gotta work on my bad habits and get better at neutral.
  
• EVERYONE has a pocket
• Tournaments are exhausting. The struggle to keep your mental stamina up is real since your matches might take a while to start.
  
• We have the best goddamn TO.
• If you're hesitant about going to your local scene, don't be. Just GO.

JPeds is a monster. It's a travesty he isn't PRed in 'Southern Ontario' because of the way the rankings work. He at least deserves an HM for being on the same skill level as the Toronto top players, even if his spotty attendance means he misses out on the top 10.

 

[Thinkaman]

Here, have a picture:

• Shoutouts to Das Koopa for the results numbers I stole.
• I actually took the popularity data going back through March 15th (1.1.5) except for Bayonetta, which I extrapolated based on her current ~2.0% usage rate since May 20th (1.1.6). I felt going back farther for popularity values added more accuracy than it jeopardized.
• Sorry it's just text and no image icons. That stuff takes a lot of time.
• I deliberately avoided using numerical labels since they would be meaningless artifacts of our sampling techniques. Besides, it's logarithmic (base 2) so you can read and interpret it more clearly.

 

[Das Koopa]

With Shaya's suggestion, I made this as a database for tournament placings to make things easier to find:

http://smashboards.com/threads/tournament-placing-database-scoring-project.437773/

I'll be fancying this up as the day goes by.

 

[Tizio Random]

Thinkaman the real MVP here.

and from all the characters that actually have results deviate the hardest from the standard with one played less but nice results and one played so much subpar results. too but it is expected considering the Mii situation.

Also, is played more than ? Wow.

 

[LancerStaff]

Thinkaman
Just curious, is the bottom line zero and the characters placed on it at or near zero, or does the list continue further downwards?

 

[Thinkaman]

too but it is expected considering the Mii situation.

Anything related to Miis is basically invalid, since there is no meaningful data.

Also, is played more than ? Wow.

Rosalina has been historically very unpopular given how strong she is, until a few months ago. She has been played more and more by the community at large, a trend showing no signs of slowing.

Sheik had a big popularity hit immediately after 1.1.5. Sheik remains far and away the most played character in Smash 4 events since launch, but current trends she is actually underplayed given how strong she still is. Again, community at large.


Also, shoutout to WFT mains just happening to go to small events during this sample window. That makes them show as haivng no results in Das Koopa's 100+ event data, but Smashboards rankings confirms that they were putting in the work at smaller events over that same time period. These sort of artifacts happen when you are dealing with a constrained sample size.[/QUOTE]

 

[TDK]

seems to have an elite playerbase to carry her to good results.

 

[Quappo]

If you just want to dump the plotting coordinates in here formatted like Character | Popularity | Results, I can make a character icon version for you in a jiffy

 

[Das Koopa]

Montana had a 55 player tournament in April. It had an assortment of players from Montana, Northern Idaho, Eastern Washington, Wyoming, and South Dakota. http://challonge.com/SS2016SM4SH

This is what I mean by "Dead Zone", basically. I'm sure it has active tournaments, but it's evident that they are extremely small scale, even when they attract players from OOS. I may just remove the "Dead Zone" part of West North Central though

 

[Thinkaman]

Thinkaman
Just curious, is the bottom line zero and the characters placed on it at or near zero, or does the list continue further downwards?

Long story short, it's zero. The scale is logarithmic, but I added an offset and proper scaling to affix the vertical baseline to zero results.

seems to have an elite playerbase to carry her to good results.

To be clear, Sheik is still played more frequently today than 90% of the characters in this game.

Being played less than Cloud or Mario is not really that alarming.

 

[TheGoodGuava]

I'm going to educate everyone about Bayo's neutral.

Core is just short-hopping everywhere, and threatening the 50/50 between AC nair/bair or FF dtilt/dashgrab. You cover everything between these options.

If you get put in a CQC situation use your unpunishable frame 4 upb to reset back to short hopping spam. It doesn't need to hit them, just use your several landing mix ups to reset.

Surplus mix-ups:

Dash-shield to fish for upb OOS combos
ABK or rising nair/bair/fair to catch jumps
Heelslide if you read a roll or punish a landing
Bullet climax/arts to force approaches if need be.

That's the entirety of her neutral. Character's neutral is not complex nor is it bad. You have to mix up between very few options to cover everything and be threatening.


*Drops mic*

"unpunishable" isnt really the correct word, there are several characters that can punish it well. Charizard from my experience can punish it with his own up special and thats hella scary

If you wan't to short hop nair spam be my guest, just gonna get ****ed up by a projectile or any character who doesn't have Pikachu/Mario tier range, same goes for dtilt
Bullet climax can't really be used to force approaches because of the angle the move is at, I can see bullet arts being used but considering most top/high tiers have great mobility specs or a better projectile its going to be punished. Heelslide and ABK are good but against characters with amazing ground based movesets like Mewtwo, Little Mac, Ryu, or Marth i can't see it being of much use

 

[dakotaisgreat]

The game has been out a few years now, what is going on with the miis anyways? I ask this because of their mention above but is there ever going to be a nationwide consensus on how they are ruled? Can anything be done about this? We are never going to be able to properly discuss their spot on the tier list if the rulings regarding their use are fickle and change depending on when and where they are used. If nothing changes with them, how can they even be put on a tier list anyways? 1111 50/50 Mii's would be so much lower then the character should be if their player is allowed to play the kind of mii they want to play, the way the characters were designed to be used. This would make their popularity, viability, and results go up if this were to happen, that's for sure.

I'm not trying to start an argument about Mii's lets be clear, I'm just saying that a conversation about their ruling directly relates to this thread because depeding on the ruling, all three of those characters can move up or down entire tiers. And that's important to those of us who care about the characters.

If anyone is aware of a thread or place more directly related to this, I would appreciate it if they would kindly direct me to it. I want miis to be legalized and I want to know if there is actively a conversation going on about that or if truly nobody actually gives a **** about standardized mii rulings.

 

[Thinkaman]

Having a discussion about popularity vs. results requires a nuanced understanding of several relationships and the language we can use to describe them.

First, consider two scenarios:

• If players had zero character elasticity, they would never change characters. We would thus expect to see no meaningful correlation between popularity and character strength.
• If players had unlimited character elasticity, they could immediately switch to whatever character they were most viable with given their personal aptitudes. (People are still different) We would thus expect to see a strictly linear correlation between popularity and character strength as measured in terms of relative competitive viability; i.e. a character who is "twice as viable" would imply that character is exactly twice the popularity, and visa-versa.

Obviously, neither of these is true. Character elasticity is somewhere between zero and infinity, and can vary wildly between characters and skill levels in weird and hard to measure ways.

The important think to recognize is that this gives us two schools of thought, even if we've already established that neither is completely true. Take Cloud, MK and ZSS. Cloud is much more popular and wins more, and MK is much less popular and wins less. (ZSS is in the middle.)

• The first school of thought would say that it just so happens that Cloud is popular and MK is unpopular. This school says that if Cloud and MK were played by the same amount of players as ZSS, MK would probably have higher results than ZSS and Cloud would probably have lower.
• The second school of thought is that players are all already playing their optimal character. This school says that swapping people's mains around would not change results one bit, since if it would, the players would already be doing exactly that.

Again, clearly both extremes are flawed perspectives that are easy proven true by common experience and the existence of Lucina. But it's crucial to understand these lens so we can articulate the concepts we aim to discuss.

 

[HoSmash4]

Long story short, it's zero. The scale is logarithmic, but I added an offset and proper scaling to affix the vertical baseline to zero results.


To be clear, Sheik is still played more frequently today than 90% of the characters in this game.

Being played less than Cloud or Mario is not really that alarming.

I predict the popularity of Sheik will only go down.

 

[Thinkaman]

I predict the popularity of Sheik will only go down.

It's actually been coming back up, after the 1.1.5 shock wore off and everyone realized that Sheik is still a top 3 character + good against Cloud.

 

[Y2Kay]

I predict the popularity of Sheik will only go down.

Hey, don't copy me!

But do you think Mewtwo's popularity will hurt sheik a lot?

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Okay, see? THIS is convoluted as all hell.

In regards to best FE character, I think it's really close when it comes to . The only thing that genuinely impresses me about is how I personally think she's one of worst match ups. I absolutely hate fighting her as but I honestly have no idea how most Mario players see this match up because, if my posts didn't give it away, I'm more of a lobbyist for and then anyone else in the cast. Only other top/high tier character I've seen her fight on a regular basis is , to be honest, so my perspective is kind of limited.

I'm personally more impressed by how well does against and, tying or some bold souls argue winning the match ups. I think this impresses me just because of how damn lofty the both of them feel right now. Not exactly prepatch Bayo or Sheik but just good enough that people still argue if somethings about them are too good. In the same breath, I know Ike has some pitfalls match up wise but, like I said in my last post, we have characters like in the same boat. Still, tough call.

Protip for Rosalina matchups: Hitting Luma is instant mental pressure on her. Disjointed characters like Ike, Corrin, and Cloud excel at this.

Mixed bag. On the hand, we don't have easy ladder kills and our neutral's still bad. On the other hand, I think she potentially has one of the most powerful mix-up games of the entire cast. Need to see more results before making any tier judgments, but she's much more fun to play IMO.

I'm pretty sure Bayonetta's neutral is only "bad" in the context of other top tiers. Compared to the cast at large, I think she's above average.

Lmao that's weird, I hit up my first tournament in a long *** time last night as well. I caused a bit of a kerfluffle because I 2-0'd a PR'd player (Gael) in round 1. I did okay, 2-2.

Anyways, the point of this is, having dipped my toes back into the tourney scene, I totally get why Dabuz thinks that Rosa isn't solo viable. Everyone, and I mean everyone, plays a Cloud, and Cloud eats Rosa for free. I barely took a match off this solid Rosa with my Mario, and then I slaughterhoused him with my Cloud. I've heard and seen that the MK matchup is just as bad, if not worse, but MK isn't nearly as easy to pick up as Cloud is.

And I can corroborate PK's story: go to your local scene, people are very accommodating and chill. It will probably smell slightly like unwashed funk, but that's the case with any large gathering of nerds, haha.

I know that feeling. I got trounced by a Captain Falcon at an early tournament I went to (I think he was PR'd but I'm not sure) but still managed to get some vicious edgeguards on him and was complimented on such. Felt good.

Having a discussion about popularity vs. results requires a nuanced understanding of several relationships and the language we can use to describe them.

First, consider two scenarios:

• If players had zero character elasticity, they would never change characters. We would thus expect to see no meaningful correlation between popularity and character strength.
• If players had unlimited character elasticity, they could immediately switch to whatever character they were most viable with given their personal aptitudes. (People are still different) We would thus expect to see a strictly linear correlation between popularity and character strength as measured in terms of relative competitive viability; i.e. a character who is "twice as viable" would imply that character is exactly twice the popularity, and visa-versa.

Obviously, neither of these is true. Character elasticity is somewhere between zero and infinity, and can vary wildly between characters and skill levels in weird and hard to measure ways.

The important think to recognize is that this gives us two schools of thought, even if we've already established that neither is completely true. Take Cloud, MK and ZSS. Cloud is much more popular and wins more, and MK is much less popular and wins less. (ZSS is in the middle.)

• The first school of thought would say that it just so happens that Cloud is popular and MK is unpopular. This school says that if Cloud and MK were played by the same amount of players as ZSS, MK would probably have higher results than ZSS and Cloud would probably have lower.
• The second school of thought is that players are all already playing their optimal character. This school says that swapping people's mains around would not change results one bit, since if it would, the players would already be doing exactly that.

Again, clearly both extremes are flawed perspectives that are easy proven true by common experience and the existence of Lucina. But it's crucial to understand these lens so we can articulate the concepts we aim to discuss.

Can you define "character elasticity" for this? I suspect it simply means one's ability to use different characters but it's hard to tell.

 

[Quappo]

Guess I forgot to put the icon version in here after putting it out on twitter. Whoops. For those who prefer this visualization:

as before, zero credit to me - all credit to Thinkaman and Das Koopa. Data was given to me on a silver platter

 

[Thinkaman]

Can you define "character elasticity" for this? I suspect it simply means one's ability to use different characters but it's hard to tell.

I meant elasticity in a classical microeconomics sense, where it is a measure of an agent's willingness to change their behavior.

Basically are players capable of and willing to change characters, and how quickly?

 

[ARISTOS]

Here, have a picture:

• Shoutouts to Das Koopa for the results numbers I stole.
• I actually took the popularity data going back through March 15th (1.1.5) except for Bayonetta, which I extrapolated based on her current ~2.0% usage rate since May 20th (1.1.6). I felt going back farther for popularity values added more accuracy than it jeopardized.
• Sorry it's just text and no image icons. That stuff takes a lot of time.
• I deliberately avoided using numerical labels since they would be meaningless artifacts of our sampling techniques. Besides, it's logarithmic (base 2) so you can read and interpret it more clearly.

Guess I forgot to put the icon version in here after putting it out on twitter. Whoops. For those who prefer this visualization:

as before, zero credit to me - all credit to Thinkaman and Das Koopa. Data was given to me on a silver platter

Thanks y'all.

Going off of this, it seems that we can isolate as outliers in the positive direction, while is a negative outlier.

Thinkaman , is it possible to do a line of best fit+confidence intervals?

 

[Matt11111]

Guess I forgot to put the icon version in here after putting it out on twitter. Whoops. For those who prefer this visualization:

as before, zero credit to me - all credit to Thinkaman and Das Koopa. Data was given to me on a silver platter

This is a well done table.

 

[Thinkaman]

Another way of thinking of character elasticity and those two extreme schools of thought is how diagonal you would draw the lines on that chart to separate tiers.

A person who believes in zero character elasticity (that who people play is arbitrary and popularity doesn't matter) would draw lines so flat they are horizontal, while a person who believes in unlimited character elasticity (who believes people always play the best character) would draw lines so steep they are vertical.

Thinkaman , is it possible to do a line of best fit+confidence intervals?

Let's say no. This would imply a level of confidence about the linearity of our trend that we don't have, and an awareness about our population size that we can't assert. Anything we said along either of these lines might as well be made up entirely.

 

[Amadeus9]

Here, have a picture:

• Shoutouts to Das Koopa for the results numbers I stole.
• I actually took the popularity data going back through March 15th (1.1.5) except for Bayonetta, which I extrapolated based on her current ~2.0% usage rate since May 20th (1.1.6). I felt going back farther for popularity values added more accuracy than it jeopardized.
• Sorry it's just text and no image icons. That stuff takes a lot of time.
• I deliberately avoided using numerical labels since they would be meaningless artifacts of our sampling techniques. Besides, it's logarithmic (base 2) so you can read and interpret it more clearly.

What I take from this is that self doubting MK mains need to wise up... B)

 

[paperchao]

Guess I forgot to put the icon version in here after putting it out on twitter. Whoops. For those who prefer this visualization:

as before, zero credit to me - all credit to Thinkaman and Das Koopa. Data was given to me on a silver platter

Wow, little mac is decently high, it seems like his results back up his popularity pretty well